If you live in a busy urban centre,  lets say a large bustling city such as London, Manchester, Derby, Chester etc then you’ll usually find that you have a large selection of skilled tradesman covering a range of services including many  local locksmiths, all within a couple of miles of your location.

Of course you still need to choose carefully as there are many amateur locksmiths dotted around the UK looking for one off easy money jobs such as emergency entry where they’ll show up and immediately get out their drill, typically with the accompanying statement “This type of lock has to be drilled, It’s pick proof” which is nonsense, most locks can be picked and a professional locksmith will always choose this option first before using anything that will damage your lock and/or door which is particularly a problem if you have a spare set of keys in your house so don’t need all new locks. In the locksmith industry we call this non destructive entry.

The amateur goes straight for his/her drill because he/she doesn’t have the necessary skills to pick the lock or owns any bypass tools, remember the amateur locksmith is either completely untrained or has taken a private 1 -3 days crash course. As for the skilled required to drill out a lock, there is none, anyone can drill into a lock if they have a powerful enough drill and quality drill bits, which is why you find a lot of rogue traders in the locksmith industry.

Finding a local locksmith in urban and rural areas

In more rural areas such as Kendal or Bowness both situated in Cumbria and many parts of Scotland such as Beith in North Ayrshire or Clydebank in West Dunbartonshire you’ll discover that your nearest locksmith may be 40+ miles away, but will they come so far?

In urban towns and cities you’ll find dozens of locksmiths all touting for work when you search “locksmith near me” or “local locksmith” but you still need to be careful as some of these listings will be duplicates from rogue traders or national locksmith companies call centres, who have simply purchased local phone numbers which is very easy and cheap to do nowadays as a telephone number costs  approx £2.50 per month. Yes two pound and 50 pence per month and as they only get incoming call that’s all they will ever pay.

These national locksmith companies will send the nearest locksmith on their books which may be quite a way away leaving you waiting for hours for what you thought was a genuine self employed local locksmith.

You can usually spot the national call centres as the website you’re sent to will be very basic and won’t actually include a local address, just a local phone number as addresses cannot be easily spoofed in the same way as a phone number can. Another sign of an amateur is if the locksmith turns up in a car rather than a branded van displaying their website, logo and contact information

What you are looking for is a genuine local locksmith with a website that includes their address and information about their business. You could also ask “Will it be you coming out?” If the answer “No, we’ll send one of our many local engineers” then put the phone down and try again.

Why Is it bad to use a national call centre? Isn’t a locksmith a locksmith?

No… Not all locksmiths are the same, the industry is unregulated so there are many untrained amateur ” have a go” locksmiths legally touting for work in the UK and a lot of them will hide behind the national companies contact details so he/she never gets any comeback for poor work or for overcharging and when you complain to the national company their response is usually “All our locksmith are self employed, so nothing to do with us”.

Not every locksmith working for a national locksmith company will be bad at their job but unfortunately this is the place where most of the amateur, have a go handy men hang out looking for the odd job that they can charge a ridiculous amount for, which usually starts off with a competitive call out or entry fee of around £59.

But once the work is done then the outrageous billing begins, where they’ll add extra for drilling, extra for evening or night time and then sell you a new extremely overpriced lock (a £10-£15 lock for £120) that they happened to have on the van and then even charge you extra for fitting it and a scammers – sorry amateurs – invoice for just gaining access to your home will  be £300- £400, when you expected to pay the advertised £59, so beware of theses rogue traders that give genuine locksmiths a bad name.

Finding a local locksmith in More Rural areas

In more rural areas like Scotland or other remote locations where the residential population is smaller and more spread out, your local locksmith is not so local, but is the locksmith willing to travel a lot further than locksmiths are willing to travel in urban areas?

A locksmith based in a large city will pick and choose their jobs and most will only work in a 3-5 mile radius. The rural locksmith  needs to weigh up the costs incurred by travelling, including fuel costs and wear and tear of their vehicle

In a rural area there all fewer people so fewer jobs  so locksmiths are willing to travel a lot further, say 40 miles or more to repair/change a lock or get someone into their home after getting locked out, this is why rural locksmiths rarely have set prices for jobs like emergency entry, prices will be based on distance.

The good news is that a genuine local locksmith will use their own phone number that goes directly to them and will have a website showing their actual address and usually a map of the area they cover which is important if the business wants to  feature on Google maps (now called a Google business listing) because of this they don’t overcharge and never do shoddy work because they want to build up a solid reputation in the area and get all 5 star reviews.

So even if a local Clydebank locksmith has had to travel 40 miles from West Dunbartonshire, to do an emergency entry job in Beith, North Ayrshire he/she will not try to “rip you off”, “Scam you” or whatever you want to call it by bumping up the invoice with nonsense like drilling fees, night rates and fitting fees. Why? Because he/she is not hiding behind a national locksmith call centre or franchise and simply wants good feedback and a solid reputation.

It’s a fact the over 90% of scams involving locksmiths are in cities or large towns so if you do live in a sparsely populated area you’re actually lucky because you are unlikely to get scammed….